Description

Ethical consumerism is on the rise. No longer bound to the counter-cultural fringes, ethical concerns and practices are reaching into the mainstream of society and being adopted by everyday consumers – from considering carbon miles to purchasing free-range eggs to making renewable energy choices. The wide reach and magnitude of ethical issues in society across individual and collective consumption has given rise to a series of important questions that are inspiring scholars from a range of disciplinary areas. These differing disciplinary lenses, however, tend to be contained in separate streams of research literature that are developing in parallel and in relative isolation.

Ethics in Morality and Consumption takes an interdisciplinary perspective to provide multiple vantage points in creating a more holistic and integrated view of ethics in consumption. In this sense, interdisciplinary presupposes the consideration of multiple and distinct disciplines, which in this book are considered in delineated chapters. In addition, the Editors make an editorial contribution in the final chapter of the book by combining these separate disciplinary perspectives to develop a nascent interdisciplinary perspective that integrates these perspectives and presents platforms for further research.

Reviews

"This book brilliantly unites dichotomized notions of ethics and consumption from a broad range of disciplines and perspective." –Helene Cherrier, Griffith University, Australia

"It has been widely appreciated that consumption refuses to sit comfortably within disciplinary boundaries. Too frequently the limited range of disciplines actually represented within a book hinders claims of an interdisciplinary approach. It is therefore refreshing to see an approach to the study of consumption that acknowledges and brings together the differing perspectives that leading authors from diverse fields can bring to the subject of ethics in consumption." –Matthew Higgins, University of Leicester School of Management, UK

"If consuming ethically is going to help solve the many social and ecological problems that humans currently face, then Ethics and Morality in Consumption is the kind of book we need: A book that provides fine literature reviews from multiple vantage points, that keeps re-situating and questioning the nature of ethical consumption, and that points to a bevy of questions that should keep scholars (and activists) busy for years to come." –Tim Kasser, Knox College, USA

"In a world where inequality is increasing, and endless growth is unsupportable, it is difficult to imagine a more important topic than the ethics of consumption. This thorough and comprehensive collection guides us through the ethical terrain of our possible futures, and lays out the challenges we face in imagining a sustainable consumer culture."–Richard Wilk, Indiana University, USA

Table of Contents

Foreword

Rob Harrison

Foreword

Tim Lang

Introduction

Michal Carrington, Deirdre Shaw and Andreas Chatzidakis

1. Towards a Sustainable Flourishing: Ethical Consumption and the Politics of Prosperity

About the Series

Business ethics is a site of contestation, both in theory and practice. For some it serves as a salve for the worst effects of capitalism, giving businesses the means self-regulate away from entrenched tendencies of malfeasance and exploitation. For others business ethics is a more personal matter, concerning the way that individuals can effectively wade through the moral quagmires that characterise so many dimensions of business life. Business ethics has also been conceived of as a fig leaf designed to allow business-as-usual to continue while covering over the less savoury practices so as to create an appearance of righteousness.

Across these and other approaches, what remains critical is to ensure that the ethics of business is the subject of incisive questioning, critical research, and diverse theoretical development. It is through such scholarly inquiry that the increasingly powerful purview of corporations and business activity can be interrogated, understood and, ultimately, reformulated. This series contributes to that goal by publishing the latest research and thinking across the broad terrain that characterised business ethics.

The series welcomes contributions in areas including: corporate social responsibility; critical approaches to business ethics; ethics and corporate governance; ethics and diversity; feminist ethics; globalization and business ethics; philosophical traditions of business ethics; postcolonialism and the ethics of business; production and supply chain ethics; resistance, political activism and ethics; sustainability, environmentalism and climate change; the ethics of corporate misconduct; the politics of business ethics; and worker’s rights.